Work Avoidance

Foreign Policy

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:13:56 GMT

It's weird, I know, but I have spent most of my life mystified by what passes for foreign policy in America. I just don't get it. I mean how did a country that spent its first 100 or so years of existence telling others to just leave them alone suddenly turn around and start putting their noses in other people's business? In the space of about 30 years—from our entry into World War One to the beginning of the Cold War—we went from a nation whose major credo was "Don't Tread on Me" to a nation convinced we had the panacea for all the world's ills.

Okay, maybe that last bit has just been in the last 20 years, since the end of the Cold War. Prior to then, we were just concerned with keeping the Communists at bay, but even then, there was an annoying note of sanctimony to our nosiness.

Let's be totally honest: We are not, as a nation, particularly good people. I'm not saying we're bad people, either, just that we are normal people. For the most part, we are people who got kicked out of our home nations or left because we didn't like the way things were going, there. We have a surprisingly beneficial form of government, but anyone who deserved credit for that has been dead for well over a hundred years, and everyone since has spentmuch of their time trying to figure out ways to bypass its limitations for their own benefit.

So, when American Presidents and politicians start talking about "nation-building" and efforts for "the good of humanity" I always get a little wary. I mean, who gives a fuck about humanity? As I understand it, humans can only conceptualize about thirty or so close relations and another hundred or so distant acquaintancships. Everyone else fits into that large grey mass of Them. Noboy cares about Them except in the most abstract, patronizing way that they care about shelter dogs and baby harp seals.

The only humanity that anyone has any real feelings for are the hundred and fifty people closest to them. Everyone else is best expressed by numbers. Of course, there are now so many of Them that even the numbers are staggering. There is no way to conceptualize 6.5 billion people in any way that a human mind can grasp. Most people feel stifled and crowded in a 40,000 person sports arena.

This is why America's foreign policy astounds me. Eight years ago, a group of people used our own civilian aircraft as ballistic missiles in an attack on our shores. In response we rooted out the people who were sheltering them and beat them like a thrift store rug. That should have been the end of the story, but, of course, if you haven't been living under a rock for the last 8 years, you know it's not. No, we then sent in American (and British, and Canadian, etc. ad NATO) engineers to rebuild their infrastructure for them. Because, you know, we broke it...we should fix it. Which is funny because I don't remember a bunch of Afghani air drops on September 12, 2001 with suplies and materiel for fixing the damage and horror that they (at least the psychos they were sheltering) caused the day before. It's especially irritating when you consider that Afghanistan's primary historic exports are Opium and Imperial Collapse. No one has ever held Afghanistan with an invading force and everyone who has tried has been rewarded with a morass so deep and so expensive that it destroyed them. Only the Moghul turks came close, and they did that by shifting alliances and favors among the local warlords so that they were mostly just financing an ongoing civil war.

Not that I'm suggesting we do that. We had enough of that in Central and South America in the '70's and '80's, and we all saw how well that worked out. I'm just wondering if we really need to keep shipping men and modern technology and infrastructure to a place that has been shown, historically, to be filled with more crazy than all the ex-girlfriends in New York and Los Angeles combined.

Don't get me started on Iraq. That was a tactical error to begin with. Never mind the six years of "losing the peace" we've had to tolerate.

I think America's foreign policy should boil down to a single declarative: Do not mess with us or we will fuck up your shit. We should withdraw from any foreign nation that hasn't requested our presence, defend our borders, and buckle down.

Our "Free Trade" should be a matter of trading freely with anyone who's willing to pay the price for trading with the US. We don't need foreign trade to get along. We're one of maybe four countries that can say that. We certainly don't need to ship jobs and production capacity offshore at a time when the military is becoming more automated and more dependent on production capacity than it is on manpower.

But, mostly, we should just leave everyone else alone. As long as they remember not to mess with us. Because we will fuck your shit up.

Republicans and Democrats: A Penny Play

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:43:59 GMT

Scene: A man is floating on a spar in the ocean, obviously in distress. He's mostly okay now, but it's clear that if he stays out there much longer he will join the millions in Davey Jones's Locker. Two wooden ships of 19th century design arrive to "help".

Good Ship Elephant: Let us save you. We'll allow you to join our crew and earn pennies each day while the officers make a killing. Also, we'll charge you triple-value on your dried-bicuit rations while giving the officers a bonus each time they eat a kiwi.

Good Ship Donkey: No, let us save you! You don't need to join our crew to earn pennies each day, and the biscuit is free. But if you do work, you can't be angry when we take what you've earned to give to everyone else. Also, we may have to take some of the stuff you already have and destroy it, since it may offend some of our more sensitive crewmembers.

GSE: (to GSD) Your ship has a hole in it.

GSD: Your ship has a hole in it and your sails are torn.

GSE: Your ship has a hole in it, your sails are torn, and your figurehead looks like a whore.

GSD: That's my mother.

GSE: I don't see a contradiction.

GSD: I hate you so much.

(Both ships start lobbing cannonballs at each other, completely forgetting the castaway between them.)

The Great War

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:34:02 GMT

Ninety years ago, on this day, at eleven o'clock am GMT, the most significant military event in modern history ended with the adoption of the Armistice Agreement. It would be a few more months until the Germans and their allies fully surrendered at the Treaty of Paris, but from November 11, 1919, World War One was officially over.

In the horrors of the War that followed 20 years later, the Great War seems to have shrunken a little, and while I do not wish to minimize the importance of the Second World War, it's World War One that should be marked by history. After the War to End All Wars, everything changed.

Militarily, WWI introduced the high-volume machine gun, the automatice rifle, and the tank, ending forever the days of pitched battles between ordered companies. The war horse saw its last days in the War, replaced by motorcycles, general purpose vehicles and armored assault vehicles. The concept of "supressing fire", firing a weapon at an enemy's general location to keep them from rising up and mowing down your troops, was born in World War One. Airplanes developed from observation tools to efficient machines of death from above. German Zepellins introduced British and French civilians to the idea of total war, and the horrible reality that the front lines were no longer the edge of hostility.

The filth and crowding of the trenches, and barely-better conditions in the camps and hospitals contributed to the evolution of the first completely airborne plague in human history. Prior to the Spanish Flu, epidemic illness came from touch, bad water, or animal vectors. Antiseptics and sulphamides, developed during the war, revolutionized medicine and surgery.

The War to Make the World Safe for Democracy ended the last vestiges of the Feudal System in Europe. Harsh treatment of lower classes in Russia developed into rebellion which culminated in the mutiny aboard the Potemkin, and finally the October Revolution. By the time the smoke cleared, the first Marxist-Leninist Socialist state in world history ruled the Slavic world. In the West, heavy losses and commitments of able-bodied men had the dual effect of ameliorating the abuses wrought by industrial-age factory conditions (there was no longer a large class of indigents from which to acquire new workers) and of empowering women to demand (at least) the right to vote.

Tolkien, Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Lewis were all heavily influenced by their experiences in the War. The soft pastels of the Impressionists began to give way to the hard lines of the Moderns, especially Cubists like Picasso. In sculpture, the Nuveau adoration of natural forms was replaced with the harsh angular lines and sharp arches of the Deco Period.

Remember Flanders, remember the Somme and Ypres. Remember Gallipoli and Verdun. Remember the millions of men and women who lost their lives to bullets, artilllery, Mustard Gas, and that horrible Flu. Remember today. The Day Everything Changed.

Loyalty + Stability = Screwed

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:15:30 GMT

So, I cam home last night to find my wife of 20 years was leaving me for the teenage kid that's been doing donuts in my yard for the last six months. He's an incompetent lover and can't give her orgasms, also he's a jerk, but he's young and kinda pretty. I'll be able to stay in the house if I want to, but I have to pay his room and board and pretend I don't know they're committing sweaty, unskilled acts of infedlity two rooms over.

Okay, that didn't really happen.

That's really just an analogy for what actually did happen, which was that the credit card I've had and tolerated for 18 years has decided to raise my APR to 20-something percent above Prime, which makes it about 25 per cent. If I'm a good boy and transfer $3000 in credit from somewhere else, I can get it down to a one-shot one-year rate of just 20 per cent APR. That's like telling a woman you'll only rape her a little if she gives you a blowjob.

The thing is, I have consistently been one of their best customers. I rarely pay the minimum, and I normally pay the thing off. And it's not like there's a lack of activity on my card. I use it for gas, and for paying a few automated bills. They make money off of that whether I pay it off in the month required or not (this is not an AMEX, so they charge a month's interest immediately, plus they get a very nice service fee from vendors).

No, they want me to pay for their crappy screening process. They've been running boiler-room sales offices that reward fudging for so long that they can no longer tell the difference between a bad credit risk and a good client.

Fuck 'em.

Freewriting exercise

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:44:37 GMT

This may turn into a full story. For now, I'm just going to ype until I run out of steam.

At five forty-nine on the evening of October 4, Carla Santerra, standing in her driveway in Southwest Houston opened what she thought was a beer. It felt a little heavy in her hand, but she wrote that off to fatigue from the long day she had spent tending her yard and detailing her 2005 Chevrolet Suburban. At the moment she popped the cap, it closed a rocker switch that allowed a small capacitor to roll a spark through some very high octane gasoline. The gasoline ignited, converting the aluminum can into shrapnel.

The explosion tore Carla's left hand apart and drove the lid into her right wrist. A piece of the can's side flew into her chest and punctured her right lung, but not before opening her descending aorta.

Carla's brother-in-law, Tito Gonzales, was sitting nearby talking to Carla's husband, Bob. They had just finished building a raised garden so Carla could grow vegetables, and were resting while keeping her company as she finished her work. A piece of the can removed Tito's left eye; Norberto "Bob" Santerra wasn't so lucky. Two thirds of his wife's ring finger, including her wedding set, were driven into his neck and through his carotid artery.

Carla's sister, Rosa, and her chihuahua, Machito, received only minor injuries, although Machito would bark aggressively at beverage cans for the rest of his life.

Five Books

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:40:44 GMT

Five Books you must read to Understand the United States:

Kenneth C. Davis; Don't Know Much About History—This is probably the most recently-written book in this list. Davis has a liberal slant, but he's too honest to revise history beyond offering a few interpretations of different events that others may not agree with.

PJ O'Rourke; A Parliament of Whores—Explains how the US government actually works, and does a pretty good job of explaining how that differs from the theory and why.

Dashiell Hammett; Complete Novels(there are only five, and they're all short)—Forget Gatsby, you want to understand early-20th-Century American men, you study Nick Charles, Sam Spade, and the National detective.

Louis L'Amour; The Sackett Series—The Sackett books follow an American family from colonialism to the dying days of the West. L'Amour's prose does an excellent job of conveying the hugeness of the country they built.

Earnest Hemingway; anything—Next time you see Bruce Willis fire a glock through his own shoulder to kill the raving lunatic behind him, think of Papa, and remember that he lived about half of what he wrote.

If you're from a foreign country, why not respond with a compact list for understanding your people. If you're from the US and disagree with my list, feel free to strike one down, but have something to replace it, and post your reasons for doing so.

A quick note

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:06:54 GMT

So, having listended to my friend Jon Dalton apologize to his friends and readers because he's working 27 jobs just to meet the rent and has no time to do the frighteningly detailed drawings that make up his comic on a schedule tighter than once a week or so, and having spent some time on a political forum where three middle-aged men who are or have been poor are repeatedly told by a college student who has never missed a meal what exactly the poor need, I find myself in a situation where I need to spout off.

After four hundred years, you'd think the whiney liberal slackers in the US would shut the hell up. The very basis of the US, the English-speaking colonies on the North American Continent, came from the experimental proof that liberal ideas don't work, not even on the small scale. No, I'm not talking about the Puritan and the Separatist religious colonies in Massachusetts. I'm talking about the first continuous settlement of English-Speaking people. The Virginia colony was not settled by anyone seeking a better life or religious freedom: It was settled by a bunch of rich nellies who wanted some of those American riches the Spanish seemed to have so much of, but didn't want to go through the trouble of destroying an empire with war and disease.

This strategy of slouching around and expecting cash to just fall into your pocket didn't work out quite the way the founding drunken uncles expected it to do. They almost immediately started starving in piles of their own filth, until they were "saved" by Captain John Smith. Now you have to understand, that Smith was not a paragon of virtue, morals, or ethics; the best historians all agree that he was a fictional character in his own autobiography, sometimes serving on opposing armies while fighting in simultaneous battles that occurred on opposite sides of the world.

But we're not concerned with Smith's amazing ability to fertilize the fields of history with pure bullshit, what happened in Virginia was an actual fact reported by people who didn't have a vested interest in the size of Smith's E-Peen. He pointed his gun at people and told them they could start working and continue to eat and have a place to live, or they could continue playing HALO 4 in the swamp outside the settlement walls and starve to death, but either way, only productive members got the food and the bed, and nobody wanted to trip over the rotting corpses of the slackers.

So the colony survived until some mebers determined that maybe a tiny island with no natural defenses located in the middle of a giant tidal swamp was possibly a bad place to live when your medical technology focused on better living through exanguination. They survived because they got off their asses and did the work.

So here's the thing, if you find yourself getting calls twice a week from someone you owe money to, and you've ever said "I shouldn't have to (insert job that's "beneath" you)", look around. You're outside the walls and just a couple of weeks from having the horseshoe crabs make a snack out of your toes.

Cutting Trees

Sat, 02 May 2009 18:56:32 GMT

Last week was Earth Week. Yeah, I know that, technically, there isn't an Earth Week, that it's really Earth Day, and it was last Wednesday, but, since the festivities (and advertising) went on all week, I'm just going to pretend that it was officially a week. Anyway, I mention this because I noticed that there was a lot of noise about planting trees. There was also a new brand of paper towels and bathroom tissue that made a very strident point about how their disposable paper product was made with almost entirely recycled paper. Whoop-de-flippin'-do. Every paper product available is mostly recycled. High-quality bond and library-quality book paper are made from recycled materials. The tiny bits that aren't recycled come from tree farms where the trees are grown for the specific purpose of being used in paper and lumber.

The truth is, helping the environment by planting a tree in the United States is like helping the obesity problem by passing out brocolli at a Vegan convention. The US currently has more forestland than it did in 1900, and almost as much forest land as it did when Westerners first appeared 500 years ago. Part of this is due to heavily-regulated tree farms, but a certain amount can be attributed to soil-conservation attempts that date back to the end of the Dust Bowl. Fence row plantings and other fallow areas have gone unaccosted for years, allowing them to form mixed woodlands of various types. There is, in fact, less farmland in the US providing about ten times as much food.

I'm not saying that there isn't a deforestation problem in the world. But, unfortunately, that deforestation is happening outside of our legal boundaries, and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it short of invading those countries in which it is occurring to force our desires on them. Anyway, that deforestation is not happening for wood and paper production, it's mostly occurring in places with rapid population growth and is occurring as clear-cutting in order to expand living and farm space, most notably in Brazil, where sugar cane plantations to provide sugar ethanol have been sprouting up like weeds.

So, I'm sorry to tell you, but if you're concerned about the environment, there aren't a lot of big, showy things you can do that will have any kind of difference. True environmentalism comes from things your parents told you (if you're my age) when you were a kid: turn off the light, put on a sweater, you don't need the car if you're just going to the corner. If the 300 million people in the United States did just those few simple things then we'd all be a lot better off (we'd use less oil, too).

Anyway, that wasn't the point of today's rant. Okay that was the point of the ranty part of today's rant but there's more to this than just my momentary frustration with pseudo-environmentalists who want to look like heroes for their ability to use a shovel (insert Mystery Men reference here). See the thing is, I live pretty close to a couple of those tree farms, and they're kind of fascinating.

I live a short drive from the Sam Houston National Forest, which is a wide swath of land owned by the Federal Government but leased and exploited by various private concerns from tree farms to small cattle ranches. A few years ago, my wife and I, in our endless quest to find new paths to wander on until we get lost and die drove up to a little used public trail through part of the Forest. Now, when I say little-used, I mean that this trail just existed as a trail, and wasn't maintained by anyone. You followed the "trail" by finding blazes on the trees, and it (allegedly) led around in a semi-circle back to the state highway where it began. Unfortunately, the part of the forest the trail was in (a tree farm), was, at that time being marked for thinning, and the blazes they used for that purpose were identical to the trail bazes, so it wasn't long before we were nowhere near any place we were supposed to be. We wandered for the better part of the day, and had many wacky adventures, the upshot of which were that I was reminded that bulls are fucking huge, but are nowhere near as psychotic as they are reputed to be (thank god).

During the walk, we passed out of the part that was marked for thinning and skirted a fairly new area that was growing freely. I say, "skirted", because there was no way we could enter the newer growth even had we wanted to. The entire field was crowded with pine saplings ten or fifteen feet high and nearly as wide with their trunks only about five feet apart. Just standing next to it gave me a feeling of claustrophobia. I turned around to the older forest that was marked for a harvest thinning, and realized that it had once been a crowded grove like this one. If I looked closely, I could even discern the remains of the neat lines in which the older trees had been planted. Surely the new field was as due for thinning as the older one; I pictured the uses to which these small trees might be put--possibly Christams trees (although it was August), but mostly like they'd be crushed up for paper or boiled down for creosote. Either way, I knew that sometime soon, someone would decide that a fair number of them had to go, so the others would have a chance to grow straight and tall.

Spring salad, suckling pig, and veal all began as by-products of the farmer's need to thin his crops. Thinning is a natural part of life, a necessary part of life. Ultimately, things become too crowded, and you have to open them up and let the light and the air back in. A few weeks ago, I had the Arizona ash in my front yard removed. The average life span of the Arizona ash is twenty-five years. Ours was over forty, and was starting to show its age. After Ike, and some fallen-branch incidents that weren't even related to high winds, my wife and I decided it had to go. We kept the stump to serve as a sort of memorial to the old tree, because nothing that lives so long should be forgotten.

My yard looks different. Not necessarily better, but definitely more open. More lighted, too. The twisted saplings and seedlings that had been languishing in the old ash's shadow are already showing signs of improved growth, and the grass, always pale and thin in that part of the yard (when it grew at all) is now thick and verdant. The yard had, in essence, been thinned, and in so doing, I had given it a new chance to grow.

I know it's not a fully transparent metaphor, but that was the reason I had to end the comic. As I explained previously, the story the comic told was more or less over, and the weekly obligation of updating had stopped being a contributing part of the forest of my mind. Far to the opposite, the oppressive weight of repeatedly forcing myself to return to a story that was over (whether I knew it or not) was quietly choking out the garden of my creativity, leaving stunted and unhealthy phantoms in its shadow.

People say it's good to plant a tree. Sometimes, it's even better to cut one down.

Comic's up

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:02:02 GMT

Read it first. Like I said, not a joke, nor a prank.

Comic's up

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:42:47 GMT

The comic is up. Will work on the backlog this week (but not Monday, since Monday I won't have any power). I'll try to start doing rants and reviews again next week.

Comic's up

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:57:00 GMT

I know it's late. Don't you judge me.

Comic's up

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:30:16 GMT

Next week's might actually be on time. I dunno.

Before anyone points it out to me, yeas the first two panels were both cribbed directly from a previous comic. I'm lazy. I thought you people knew that.

Comic's up

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:14:49 GMT

Tomorrow's comic will be up some time tomorrow or maybe Tuesday.

Last week's Comic

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:57:32 GMT

is up. Yesterday's will be up soon. It's Hell Week for the show I'm directing, so I should get back on schedule by next week and rebuild the buffer shortly thereafter.

If you're going to be in Houston on a Saturday between March 7 and April 11, stop by The Company Onstage and buy some tickets for Alice in Wonderland.

comic will be late

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:25:16 GMT

This week's comic will be late, guys. I pissed away the buffer and I let the week get ahead of me. My apologies.

Comic's up

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:07:55 GMT

Yeah, I'm not too terribly happy with the cat (Bast) in panel three, either. No good models. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

New Review

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:51:16 GMT

Girls with Slingshots. Crossposting the opening which has nothing to do with the review itself:

Okay, a couple minor personal notes before I get on with the review: First, I'm sure you've heard about the fires raging across central Australia. They're extremely bad, not only because they're just huge and have already more or less erased a couple of towns, but because Australia doesn't normally get that kind of action, and they seem to be having trouble getting them under control. I'm not asking anyone to donate anything to anyone; that's a personal choice and no one needs the pressure, especially if they can't afford to do so, but, if you can and want to, I would suggest donating to the International Red Cross, who will see that the funds you donate get to the right places and people.

The other minor point, also has to do with fire, but on a much smaller scale. Darcy and Matt Sowers, of Codename: Hunter, suffered a small electrical fire last month. This set them back on a few fronts, not the least of which was the discovery that they'll have to rewire their entire house. Again, I'm not fishing for donations, here, or asking anyone to do anything they wouldn't normally do. For one thing, the Sowers haven't requested assistance, and I wouldn't insult them by suggesting I knew the level of their needs more than they do. However, if you've been thinking of buying a subscription to Codename: Hunter, now would probably be a good time to do so. If you haven't been by there, click the link above and give the comic a look. It's certainly worth your time, and a sub (which includes color comics and a storyline an issue in advance of the free site) may well be worth your dime. Most of all, forbearance is required. They lost data and connections in the mayhem surrounding the fire, and even before the fire, Darc was showing symptoms of repetitive stress in her drawing arm, so the stress of having jackasses constantly bitch because CN:H hasn't updated in a couple of weeks probably won't help. So, while you don't need to donate or even subscribe, you do need to not be an ass about things (not that you would).

New Comic

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:40:19 GMT

New Comic. Remember this comic from back when I thought I could pull off twice-weekly updates? That comic immediately precedes the current one.

And, yes, that is Comic Sans. There were some problems with the new font not producing characters, and Comic Sans is closest to that font in letter shape and readability so it's not too jarring. Also Comic Sans frosts JD's shorts.

Comic's up

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:15:59 GMT

Supersized comic and the end of the arc. Remember what I said about my art being erratic for a while? well we're out of the old buffer and into that. Sorry. I'll stabilize as soon as I can.

As to today's comic, I was not simply jacking with you, my beloved readers. I once had an experience exactly like that, where I dreamed I'd been in a coma for a very long time and when I woke up it took me a few minutes to determine which reality was true. It was a very strange experience.

Also, I wanted to jack with you guys a little.

Comic's up

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:50:21 GMT

One more comic in this story arc then we'll jump to the present and get back to the funny. This is also the last comic using the old font, so the comic should be more readable in the future.

New Comic

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:36:20 GMT

It's new...and it's a comic!

No Friday Comics (for a while)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:12:24 GMT

Okay, I've decided that until I get my style/technique issues sorted out, I won't be making Friday comics. Especially since I'd have to run a parallel story arc that's out of sync with the current one. Also, I want to concentrate on maintaining the Monday buffer.

So, basically, there very likely won't be any Friday comics (except maybe a Flying Ted) until February at the earliest.

New Comic

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:52:36 GMT

New comic up.

New Comic

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:54:01 GMT

Here. Comic-to-comic navigation is gonna be iffy for the next few weeks. I'm running parallel arcs, but the Penny arc was supposed to take place back in October, so when all is said and done they'll be linked sequentially, but I can't do that until they're all up.

New Review

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:32:43 GMT

Better Days and a special prezzy on the main page.